Perhaps one of the finer values that you\'re likely to find in a crowded market, for a mere 30 bucks, Foundation Flash 5 will give you an excellent tutorial that brings you through almost every usable feature of Flash 5. Of course, being a true walk-through of Flash\'s features, this means that it won\'t serve you particularly well as a future reference or as a resource for advanced Flash users--but, who cares? For the beginner, you\'ll find it hard to beat the information that\'s presented here. Unlike the abundance of so-called "tutorials" that you\'ll find in the computer book industry, Foundation Flash 5 is a true tutorial--it goes step-by-step through the myriad features of Flash, and expects you to follow diligently. This isn\'t an airplane book that you can read and understand while you\'re away from your PC--no, Foundation Flash 5 not only expects, but darn near demands, that you plop yourself in front of the computer and do every single one of its exercises. If it says that you need to click this button, you need to click that button. And, if you don\'t, you might well find yourself completely lost near the middle of the book, because one of its stronger features is how each exercise builds upon the previous one. But this strict authoritarian teaching style isn\'t exactly unwarranted; after all, Flash 5 is a conceptually complex program that not only deals with graphics, but also with time, motion, text, and three dimensions. Teaching a program that\'s so visual demands a special method, which the book provides admirably. Beginning with drawing simple shapes and launching into simple motion, then building all the way up to the foundations of ActionScript, the examples are well chosen and serve to give the reader ideas of what can be done with Flash. As the book moves along, it increasingly assumes that you can do more and more without extensive supervision--which, if you\'ve been following the lessons, will be true--allowing the book to give increasingly complex instructions without bogging down in reminding the reader how to do simple tasks. By the end, you\'ll be doing extremely complex Flash activities, but only be given a few simple instructions in what to do ("Draw a TV that looks like this"). The writing is well done, and laced with the occasional hint of gentle humor; when they describe how to skew and distort, for example, the authors use a piece of rabbit clip art, and refer to it as the "breakdancing bunny," when they twist it to and fro. The authors also take great care to instill good habits from the very start, ensuring that readers use symbols properly, and explaining why (and when) you\'ll need them. Every major function of Flash is gone into in depth, and some of Flash\'s lesser-used functions also are brought up. There are a few minor kvetches, however; the number one problem is the lack of a CD. The book has a lot of tedious drawing examples, and it would have been nice not to have to do everything from scratch (although you can download many of the files from the book\'s Web site). Also, the book\'s section on ActionScript is a tad weak, but that\'s to be expected--when you\'re dealing with beginners, as the book assumes you are, it\'s difficult to explain all of the programming topics and what you can use ActionScript for. Finally, the book is linear in nature--as stated earlier, each example builds upon the previous one. If you miss something, and this doesn\'t make it clear to you, you might have a heck of a time catching up, and you\'ll be chained to your computer until you figure it out. But, when all is said and done, for a mere 30 dollars you get a book that will bring you up to speed posthaste. Considering that a lot of other Web/graphic design books cost $50, and don\'t give you half the content and presentation that this book gives you, these complaints are minor, indeed. If you\'re looking to learn Flash, there is no other book out there on the market like this. What other recommendation do you need? Now, go buy it!